Sunday, September 25, 2005

A Quiet Country Market

It begins quietly. A couple drive into a country town to shop and look
at the literature on display at the Vegetarian Festival. By accident they
stumble on an outpost of The Coalition Against Civilization, an
organization dedicated to an ideology called eco-primitivism. The
harmless-looking vegetarians are passing out pamphlets looking for a few good species
traitors, who would work towards "spreading and developing theories and practical means to bring about the destruction of civilization and defend what wilderness
remains." For a real-life account, read Baron Boddisey's and Dymphna's
description of their experiences in the Gates
of Vienna.

Societies whose goal is the destruction of human civilization or even
humanity itself have existed on the margins for some time. The Voluntary
Human Extinction Project (VHEMT) argues it is not enough to reduce the
population that is burdening Gaia. Humanity must disappear down to the last man,
woman and child to "allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health".
Theodore Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, a trained mathematician of extremely high
intelligence, embarked upon a terrorist program whose aims were put forth in the
manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future.
According to Wikipedia:

The main argument of Industrial Society and Its Future is that technological progress is undesirable, can be stopped, and in fact should be stopped in order to free people from the unnatural demands of technology, so that they can return to a happier, simpler life close to nature. Kaczynski argued that it was necessary to cause a "social crash", before society became any worse. He believes a collapse of civilization is likely to occur at some point in the future; thus, it is better to end things now, rather than later, because the further society develops, the more painful things will be when the collapse occurs. If it does not occur, he says, humans will have the freedom and significance of house pets, although they may be happy, in a society dominated by machines or an elite social class.

A paperback published some years ago, Rainbow
Six, wove the threads of these urban-legend type ideas together and had a
plot based around an environmentalist scheme to depopulate the world with a
genetically engineered virus, so that the enlightened survivors could be free to
enjoy nature without the stain of man excepting of course, the environmentalists
themselves.

The desire to alter the relationship between man and the world isn't confined
to the Coalition Against Civilization. One concept skimming right under the
surface in the ocean of internet memes is the idea of the singularity. Glenn
Reynolds has posted extensively on the subject, often relating it to
advances in human life-extension and biotechnology. Singularity is described in Wikipedia
as

a predicted future event when technological progress and societal change accelerate due to the advent of superhuman intelligence, changing our environment beyond the ability of pre-Singularity humans to comprehend or reliably predict. This event is named by analogy with the breakdown of modern physics knowledge near the gravitational singularity of a black hole.

Such consequences were discussed in the 1960s by I. J. Good, though the first use of the term singularity to describe technological progress was by John von Neumann in the 1950s. The Singularity was vastly popularized in the 1980s by Vernor Vinge. It is disputed when or if the Singularity will occur, but futurists most commonly estimate the third decade of the 21st century.

The consequences of a singularity are the precise opposite of the goals
desired by the Voluntary Human Extinction Project (VHEMT). If VHEMT purposes to
resolve the tension between man and the world by removing man, singularity puts
humanity increasingly in charge of the natural world. In Ray Kurzweil's words:

An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense 'intuitive linear' view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The 'returns,' such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

Such were the perils encountered by Baron and Dymphna at the Vegetarian
Festival. Maybe they should have shopped elsewhere. There's a reason why some
supermarkets are called Safeway.

211 Comments:

The irony is that just when we as a human race are so close to making incredible gains toward eon-long goals and dreams, these quasi-luddites are trying to make cavemen out of a few humans, and exterminate all the rest. These naive people are desperately in need of a real education, not the rubbish they have clearly been exposed to.

I've yet to see any of these "back to the boonies" folks actually walk the walk. Go fig, living close to nature is hard living. It ages you fast, long before your time. You can't expect the narcissists on the left to actually do something that'd make themselves less attractive...

You're right about vegetarian festivals, though...and to think it all started with a trip to the library.

Innocents abroad, that's what we were. Had to hide our politically incorrect books between two novels so we wouldn't be spotted as subversives there in Li'l Kumquat.

PS Whole Foods is also considered a good stock investment by the "experts" and is an excellent place to work per the employees. Besides they have such wonderful freebies in each department -- you can have lunch for free whilst shopping.

I'm a vegetarian. And just for the record, I condemn all acts of violence committed in the name of vegetables. A plant-based diet is a way of peace, not violence. No one who commits violence against fellow humans can be a true vegetarian.

Marshall McLuhan said something to the effect thatall man's inventions are attempts to "outer" all of the potentialswe have within ourselves...hence his subtitle for "Understanding Media" was "The Extensions of Man".

we project how "awful" the singlarity would be based on the fact that it's... 1)currently unknowableand2)not here yetand3)picturing the worst is (in reasonable forms)a human survival skill

would the Singularistsbe dissapointed if,instead of "going under",mankind adapted to the new world of "singular intelligence"??

as McLuhan also said,(paraphrased)the Luddite path of trying to stop or reverse change is like setting yourself on the freeway facing oncoming traffic...when/if you resist it by moving against the traffic you end up increasing the velocity at the collision.

"After 2 and a half years, Species Traitor no. 4 is finally available. This marks our first issue in book format and by far our best issue to date.

The issue opens with an indepth look at the social and ecological consequences of domestication and the collapse of civilizations (including our own). The bulk of the issue deals with rewilding and resisting. Too long have these been treated as antithetical tenets of reaction to our reality, but there's little truth to this. Rewilding and resisting are one in the same. They don't need to be different actions so long as they are rooted in the same interests. They go hand in hand. We have a number of articles about the high points and fused focuses of each with a number of practical applications to daily life. Whether we're talking about uprooting fiber optic cables, personal diets, expanding our awareness, physical resistance, or rebuilding community, the interest lies in the destruction of civilization and a return to wildness."

The collapse of Bolshevism deprived the panoply of fellow-travelers of the paradaisal vision they needed to function. To make it from one day to the next. The Worker's Paradise functioned as the Opiate of the Moonbats, vacuuming the truly insane from society and placing them in the custody of relatively functional cult leaders like Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. Now that these worthies are gone, their former wards have all crawled out of the snakepit.

The mujahideen of the Great Islamic Jihad are honorary members of the Coalition Against Civilization. I'm interested in the natural convergence between the two groups, the Islamists and the hard-core destroy-the-industrial-world Left. They both have the same motive, after all -- exterminating four-fifths of the earth's population -- and after they seize power they can fight among themselves about who has to be killed.

My money's on the jihadis. Or it would be, if there were to be any money left after the Green-Islam Alliance ushers in the Perfect Utopia.

Wretchard, don't forget Ward Churchill. Don't you think he could function as a ruthless and charismatic leader of the moonbats? Maybe not on the order of Pol Pot -- but still, I could see him opening up some "Special Activities" camps for the incorrectly informed among us...

This is the half-empty side of Kurzweil's half-full argument. Both sides use the same data to make their points.

A lot of people credit Vernor Vinge with coining the Singularity. But the idea was around way before - Von Neumann knew about as did some authors of some short SF stories - and I cannot find one short story in particular..

It's an empirical fact that more cult members die at the hands of their cults than from 'outsiders'. Many millions of Communists were killed in Party purges, a number far greater than was achieved by the US Armed Forces, with its bombers, warships, tanks, artillery and machineguns, in fifty years of conflict.

The process takes on many names. Criticism Self Criticism. Rectification meetings. Reeducation camps. Cults are organized insanity and paranoia. A guy like Ward Churchill exists because the cult hasn't taken over yet. The day it does he will be among its first victims.

"It's an empirical fact that more cult members die at the hands of their cults than from 'outsiders'."

Battered Wife Syndrome:

"The battering syndrome is not a disease per se because it cuts across socioeconomic and diagnostic categories."

and

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_wife_syndrome

"Battered wife syndrome is a recognized psychological condition to describe a woman who, because of constant and severe physical abuse by a male partner, becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow her to escape the abuse."

There are common threads between the Left, which blames everyone but the perpetrator, and the Battered Wife, who blames herself and no one else.

More common threads between between the left, BWS, the singularists, the anti-humans, and the jihad: Submission to a inhuman higher power. Har. The left may be through with the Trinity, but the Trinity is not through with the left.

Wretch, I agree with you. The minute Al Qaeda defeats the West and the Caliph assumes power, the knives will emerge and insufficiently Islamic heads will roll. And those at a slight power disadvantage will always be found "insufficiently Islamic", by some strange coincidence. The blood of Muslims will run knee-deep in the souks of the Caliphate.

So you assume that Churchill doesn't have the nads to pull off a putsch and become the Dear Leader if the opportunity ever presented itself?

Did you check out Kevin Tucker, the leader of Species Traitor? Photo here. Does he look like he's got the wherewithal to line 'em up next to the mass graves, blow their brains out, and kick the still-twitching bodies into the pit? Maybe...

tony - on that same theme i highly recommend Herzog's new movie "Grizzly Man" documenting the life and last gruesome moments of grizzly-lover and certifiable back-to-naturist Tim Treadwell. He just LOVED those grizzlies - and they LOVED him so much they ate his liver (and all) washed down with a fine (bear-equivalent of) chianti.

Human nature being what it is, I'm reluctant to expect that we will make wise choices as the "singularity" approaches. Innovation has kept us ahead of the Malthusian curve for a long time, but at some point the nature of the game will change so that we may lose our position as players. I can see why that prospect makes some people panic.

This world has been a precious and beautiful thing. I don't want it to be lost either, but I am placing my shaky hopes in the possibility that we will somehow come out on the other side relatively unscathed. Our power over nature will be enhanced and our control of ourselves will be such that we can go back and repair the damage we are now doing. To think that the best option is a world emptied of humanity is a frightening thing, despair beyond my imagining. Be assured, though, that Islamofascism is not the only dangerous cult on the planet.

"The Davises were at Animal Haven Ranch, in a canyon 30 miles east of Bakersfield, to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a 39-year-old chimpanzee who was taken from their suburban Los Angeles home in 1999 after biting off part of a woman's finger.The couple had brought Moe a cake and were standing outside his cage when Buddy and Ollie, two of the four chimpanzees in the adjoining cage, attacked St. James Davis, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game. Moe was not involved in the attack.Dr. Maureen Martin of Kern Medical Center told KGET-TV of Bakersfield that the monkeys chewed most of Davis' face off and that he would require extensive surgery in an attempt to reattach his nose. Chealander told The Bakersfield Californian that the chimps also tore off Davis' testicles and foot."

Read the article. You will recognize the Davises. Animal loving, peacefully green, and since this was incident #2 for them, invincible in that peculiar way.

my completely unqualified impression is that treadwell was mentally ill - perhaps as a result of his prior drug problem. however, where does that end and moonbattery start?herzog, by the way, wasn't buying any of it.

The environmentalists in Rainbow Six, if I recall correctly, meet quite an ironic fate. Their South American compound destroyed, they are given exactly what they wanted in the first place: Total immersion in nature without the interference of outsiders. Left standing naked in the Amazon with no food, no water, and no defense against the hostile environment surrounding them, surely aware of their fate, it was a beautiful stroke of justice.

The race is on to build the first "space elevator' - long dismissed as science fiction - to carry people and materials into orbit along a cable thousands of miles long.In a significant step, American aviation regulators have just given permission for the opening trials of a prototype, while a competition to be launched next month follows in the wake of the $10 million (£5.6 million) "X Prize'', which led to the first developed craft leaving the Earth's atmosphere, briefly, last year.Supporters of the elevator concept promise a future in space that is both cheap and accessible, and contrast it to Nasa's announcement last week that it will be relying on 40-year-old technology from the Apollo programme forits $105 billion plan to return to the Moon by 2018. The companies behind the space elevator say they will be able to lift material into orbit for as little as $400 a pound, compared with $20,000 a pound using existing rockets.That would open up the possibility of tourists visiting a sky hotel in stationary orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth, with a view previously enjoyed only by astronauts.It would also allow for far cheaper travel to the Moon and other planets within the solar system, since most of the energy required by rockets is used simply to escape Earth's gravity.Russian scientists first envisaged a fixed link to space, and the idea was popularised by the British sci-fi writer and vision-ary, Arthur C Clarke, in his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise.The theory behind the space elevator is deceptively simple. With a base station on Earth and an orbiting satellite, solar-powered "climbers'', each carrying up to 20 tons, would crawl up a single cable into space over several days. The cable would be held up by the rotation of a 600-ton satellite counter-weight, much like a heavy object at the end of a spinning rope.Until recently, the concept seemed doomed by the technology available, not least finding a material strong enough to make such a long cable, able to withstand extreme temperatures.Scientists now believe that a material known as carbon nanotubes could be bound together to make a ribbon, rather than a cable, three-feet across but just half the width of a pencil.Nanotubes, which are microscopic cylinders of carbon, are currently being developed by a number of companies, including GE and IBM. In one experiment, a sheet of nanotubes one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair could support 50,000 times its own mass."Elevator 2010'', which is to be launched on October 21 in California, will offer an annual first prize of $50,000 for the best design for both a tether - or ribbon - and a lightweight climber. It is being run by the Spaceward Foundation, which promotes space exploration, and has the backing of Nasa, which has given $400,000 in prize money. At least 10 teams will take part in the first contest.Brad Edwards, a board member of the foundation, says the initial development could be ready "in the next couple of years", with the elevator itself being built in another decade. "We are talking about getting this up in about 15 years,'' Dr Edwards predicted.A rival design is being produced in Seattle by the LiftPort Group, which is counting down to a first voyage into space on April 12, 2018. The Federal Aviation Authority last week cleared an experiment by LiftPort that would use a mile-long tether attached to a balloon, something the company calls: "A critical step.'' Fears that an aircraft would crash into the elevator ribbon is just one concern. Space debris and terrorism are others.Developers propose a floating base station near the equator, more than 400 miles from the nearest flight path.Should the 800-ton ribbon break, it would either fly into space or fall back to the ground in fragments that would, in theory, hit no harder than a sheet of paper.

I'd speculate that "St. James" is a first name Mr. Davis gave himself, and that he had worked for many years on making himself as non-threatening as possible, being certain, in that familiar stolidly blank affect, that passivity is the key to ending world violence. I'd further speculate that chimps (which the writer mistakenly calls 'monkeys'), sharing as they do 99% of our own DNA, are quite capable of generating the emotion called "contempt".

...I know it's been long-time-no-post, but I gotta tell you it's a little hard to keep up with the blogging when you're getting a daily enema from infidel Tomahawks. I knew that war is supposed to be hell but dude -- this one is starting to totally... suck... after taking in the nards in Tal Afar last week, let's just say the martyr recruiting has gone a little slow. And speaking of 'a little slow,' can we talk about this latest busload of a**wipes from Damascus? Jeez, I thought the Saudis were stupid, but these Syrians take the F&%#%$@ baclava. Send one of these choads on a simple martydom operation against a Bagdhad collaborator elementary school, and they're like, "Durrrr, a thousand pardons effendi, I got lost! Doyyyy, can I have a martyrdom car with OnStar?" Then you end up having to print out MapQuest directions for them, which totally chews up printer cartridges, and they end up smeared along some desert freeway because they mistook the detonator button for cruise control... between us, it was almost a relief when Team Satan and their Iraqi puppets greased a couple hundred of my lovable losers last week . 'Thinning the herd,' if you know what I mean, and I suppose it probably raised our average insurgent IQ ten points. To 67...

...I mean, Zarkman does his five-a-day. Zarkman volunteers at the madrassa. Whenever there's a village homo who needs stoning, Zarkman brings his A-game high heat. And what thanks does Zarkman get? A g*dd*mned infidel peanut gallery of hash pipe Trustafarians and skanky Code Pink insurgent groupies too unsightly for Sig Eps Pig Night, that's what. That, plus a smoldering "safehouse" full of Syrian martyr-tards whose families all expect one of my famous personalized thank-you notes:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. _AL-DURRA____:

"Please find enclosed a Ziploc containing the remains of your martyr _TARIQ____. Though he is now frollicking in Paradise, his comrades and I will always remember him for his ___POKEMON COLLECTION____. Thanks to his holy sacrifice, we are one step closer to __EXTERMINATING THE JEWS___.

"Yours in Sharia,Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi"

Okay, I know, form letters are cold... you try writing 300 of these things a week while trying to stay ahead of the crusader missiles...

Baron, I believe that it is not so much a type of person that you are looking for, but the tyranny of circumstance; like with infidelity, the greatest predictor of human behavior is opportunity. Not one hundred percent accurate, but you still can’t beat the spread.

Again, there is no syllogism quite as close to the very nature of what it is to be human as the paradox; all beliefs, taken to extremes, become extreme.

In the heart of hearts, all men are both monster and saint, all faiths both enlightened and murderous. The Species Traitors are the fringe of a long line of wonderful natural thought stretching before Thoreau and Emerson; a good idea taken to extremes. Welcome to humanity, fellas, heaven is out of reach and hell can only be creatively imitated, but the soma remains flesh.

Besides, any singularity of an uber-intelligence is perforce a generalist computer, superior in every way to all others.

In other words, not bloody likely.

It is unlikely that an AI system will be developed that has not been utterly supplanted or preempted by specialist equipement (number crunchers, weather simulators, military computers, stock trading expert systems, engineering computers) in one or all fields. Super AI will power growth but it will not necessarily change human civilization.

Loose metaphor: inertia is the same as gravity. By either accelerating progress or continuing progress beyond human capacities to do so, we've kept the factor underlying our success to date, continuous technological progress. Far from altering the status quo, a 'singularity' has preserved it indefinitely.

Its interesting in this post technological age what we see sprouting up among us,a thriving collection of medieval tribes.In the west we have a hardy stew of neo-pagans,pierced,tattooed,embracing fundamentalist Druidism,listening to music that will make your eyeballs melt.We have the Tartar hordes riding out of Cabrini Green and South Central ready to take the rich man's goodies.Like Steely Dan sang in 1973"Will you still have a song to sing/when the razor boy comes and takes your fancy things away/will you still be singing it in that day"To top it off we have the sons of Saladin on our southern flank seeking to drive a dagger in the infidel's heart.Communism promised history's inevitable march to the paradise on earth.Instead the old demons are crawling out of the woodwork.We can only hope there are enough Knights Templar left who will bring to bear the terrible swift sword.

The Last Temptation of Dylan.In the documentary, "Hard Rain" also becomes the soundtrack to JFK's assassination, interrupted by the sound of Jack Ruby's gun. But here is one place where the movie takes a dodge: We see Dylan accepting an award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after Nov. 22, 1963. Scorsese reads portions of Dylan's speech aloud—sounding nothing like Dylan, but a lot like the psycho he played in Taxi Driver—but he leaves out the kicker, when Dylan tells the stunned crowd that he identified with Lee Harvey Oswald. This incident is no secret—it's in every Dylan biography, including Robert Shelton's authorized one—but apparently PBS (or Apple or Starbucks) were apprehensive about a hero quite that transgressive.

The whitewashing doesn't end with that moment: Where, in this rock 'n' roll biopic, are the sex and drugs? The only mention of these essential Dylanesque tropes comes from the lewd, crude, and dangerous Peter Yarrow (usually seen on PBS in telethons with his partners in crime Paul and Mary), who wistfully recalls, "Everyone wanted to get high with Bobby. Everyone wanted to sleep with Bobby." Where's that documentary?

"Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreau is a pretty good look at the idea of the singularity, with different scenarios: Heaven (represented by Kurzweil), Hell (espoused by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems), and Prevail -- which seems to say that either way, we'll all muddle through.

The first chapter, which discussed what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is up to these days is well worth the cost of the book.

The rest of the work makes for an interesting case study in "scenario planning."

Also, I'm reminded of Frank Herbert's The White Plague. Whether by chance, hook and crook, mankind will not escape his humanity nor mortality; good intentions, bad, and the throw of the dice will threaten us in ways we can only imagine, and soon.

"Then you end up having to print out MapQuest directions for them, which totally chews up printer cartridges, and they end up smeared along some desert freeway because they mistook the detonator button for cruise control... " :-)

There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.

-You can either argue that there are often ruptures in the fabric of human history, or that there never are, but it is nonsense to suggest that some unique, historically unprcedented kind of transformation is possible. Purely mythological. I am continually amazed by the propensity of intelligent people to talk nonsense when under the influence of the pervasive cult of technology. We idolize things, but new things are not themselves the basis of historical evolution (which is not to deny the truth that, increasingly, what happens in the natural world depends on us and our technological powers).

I challenge anyone here to name one technology that has ever been adapted and continuously used by humans that did not first require some ethical evolution to make the technological creation and assimilation possible. Of course you can't do it, because humans simply can't adapt any technology that they are not first socially/ethically organized to allow. For example, you can't bring banking or modern science to hunter-gatherers, unless they are first prepared to stop being hunter-gatherers.

In other words, if you want to understand history, you have to understand the basis of human historicity which is not in the first place technological, or geographical, or demograpic or merely economic, but rather ethical. Our ability to understand and organize ourselves always comes first, because we only keep ourselves from killing each other off by responding to the necessity for evolution in our ethical systems. This is the paradox of freedom.

So I am sympathetic to what Verc has said. And as for machine intelligence surpassing human intelligence what could that possibly mean? Machines don't have intelligence anything like the kind of intelligence humans have, and never will unless the machine in question is more human than machine, i.e. a cyborg, and is conscious of itself and its own mortality, thus able to understand the paradoxical basis of our transcendent, immortal, sign system and culture. It is positively queer that Kurzweil thinks he can become immortal and still remain human. Don't trust such a man's ideas of history.

I would, if there were any point, put money down that no machine will ever pass the Turing test. As I joked at another blog, if I were running the test I would begin with a question like: "why are, or is it true that, there are no atheists in fox-y-holes!!" When a macine can mediate the paradoxes of religion and a possibly offensive but not entirely coherent punning, and respond clearly within the context of my conversation, then I will admit that everything I know is wrong. And I have only done this once before. Unlike machines, humans probably can't have more than one major conversion in their lives, and so the progress of technology has to bide its time accordingly.

This goes to the heart of the problem: we are obsessed with negating our humanity, whether by wiping ourselves off the planet, melding with machinery, or transforming ourselves by social engineering into the New Man. It's the lure of power. I used to wonder why Tolkien described the slaves of power as being "eaten up by it". People, animals and the earth itself were distorted by power in Tolkien's universe, which although it starts as a means, elevates itself to an end -- the only end. It's heroes are those with the strength to reject it.

Galadriel fades and Aragorn holds fast to the Gift of Men, which Arwen at first does not understand, but in the end she does: "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. ... Nay, lady, I am the last of the Numenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days ... now, therefore, I will sleep."

Self-loathing is the vilest of human traits, as it breeds the most deplorable human perversities conceived. There was a time, when it was confined to individuals with a razor blade, or cultists with kool-aid. Sadly, now it is being embraced in the vacuum of paganism, under the cover of an amoral maelstrom of existential nihilism, in the minds of the progressively enlightened to be implemented as public policy. Self genocide!

How might a thing that hates itself with such malevolent perfection, be honestly assumed to love anything else?.. Gaia included?

Thank you for this comment, as I wasn't sure what the theme of the original post was.

"This goes to the heart of the problem: we are obsessed with negating our humanity, whether by wiping ourselves off the planet, melding with machinery, or transforming ourselves by social engineering into the New Man."

I would say that this is accurate as far as the Veggie-Commies are concerned, but I'm not sure it applies to Singularity folks. After all, few people who follow the progress of the singularity are actually doing anything about it. They're just sitting back and watching market forces at work, as Intel inevitably moves to the next process shrink and neuroscientists in Europe work towards real-time models of the human brain. I also don't think that Kurzweil has ever made any predictions that basic human emotions (hate, fear, greed, love, camraderie) would be overcome by the singularity. In fact, the whole point of the singularity is that you _can't_ make any reliable predictions.

"I used to wonder why Tolkien described the slaves of power as being "eaten up by it". People, animals and the earth itself were distorted by power in Tolkien's universe, which although it starts as a means, elevates itself to an end -- the only end. It's heroes are those with the strength to reject it."

Ah, but Tolkien was rejecting the advancement of technology, just at the Earth First people do. He lusted after a simpler time, when men lived a simple life in tune with nature. "It's no bad thing to want a simple life." I understand why he felt this way, as by all accounts WWI was hell on earth, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a reactionary anti-progressive.

People who hate people (or just love grizzly bears more) are overcome with negating humanity. I would say the majority of the human race is pretty pro-human though. Glenn Reynolds is definately pro-human, but he also thinks the singularity is coming. All those pro-human humans will be technologically empowered too in the coming decades, and I expect the race will survive and continue being human.

All the Singularity means is that Shakespeare will be performed in the Sea of Tranquility and Tolkien read by the light of a binary star. Although predictions are hard to make, I expect we'll still be human in most ways.

In Vernor Vinge's Singlularity concept in his novels, the event was marked by the almost total disappearance of Man from Earth. A few people missed it by virtue of a crude form of time travel that resulted in their accidently skipping over the Signularity. Those still on Earth cannot figure out where everyone else went, whether destroyed by some outside force, escaped into alternate realities or outer space, or into some giant Virtual Reality - Or maybe they simply found a door into Heaven.So, other than it presumably being based on rapidly accelerating technology, even the characters of the novels did not know what the Singularity was.History tends to show that people get what they want but not what they aimed for and almost never in the way that they planned. Ronald Reagan is still hated by the Anti-War Left - and yet he did more to end the type of war they claimed to fear the most than anyone in history; he was the most effective anti-nuclear weapons activist imaginable. Relative to the Cold War world of 1975 we have already passed through a Singularity. And those who claimed to hope for it the most are the ones who cannot see it - and would have prevented it if they could have.So perhaps there have been and will be many singularities - and those most atuned to the aspect of each will "Time Travel" right past them. P.S., these blogger filter words remind me of the Serbian who went to have a vision test. When asked if he could read the first line on the chart he replied "Read it? I know him!"

Steven E. Landsburg had a terrific economic-based essay on reproduction:

http://www.slate.com/id/2037/

You can actually construct a nice social philosophy based on his essay, to wit:Those philosophies which are incompatible with long-term survival cannot be moral. The Shakers are, to me, an example of a society that claimed to be ethical, but it's hard to see a difference between them and the voluntary extinction movement.

Another example would be a libetarian/liberalism that maintained their freewheeling lifestyle by relying on poorer more conservative societies to have lots of children who could be imported for manual labor-- i.e., Europe and some parts of the US.

My only objection to the concept of singularity is that technology itself brings what Robert Lucas called a "learning spillover", i.e., you learn from doing, which brings about more technological advance.

Toulouse-Lautrec's tailor sent him the suit he'd altered. Later that day the tailor's shop door swung open and there stood Lautrec, glaring. The tailor looked up, and said, "Whatsa matter, too tight, Toulouse ?"

The great masses of humanity can barely feed themselves. Only in the past decades or so has India moved from perpetual famine, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, the list is almost endless.There is no technological revolution in Liberia or Gaza, no singlarity to be reached, there, any time soon.Perhaps a machine or cyborg will reach critical mass, surpassing all expectations. Perhaps it will become God like in its' intellectYes, with technology man will create his own, new, better God, yet again.

The arrogance of the idea is baffling, much like the idea that man could control the Climate, Earth or Time itself.

Buck Rutt.. Reindeer Injures Old Couple in Finland .The buck butted the man to the ground and kicked him before turning on the woman who was talking to her son on a mobile phone, Kittila fire chief Jorma Ojala said. The son alerted rescue workers who arrived in helicopters and flew the couple to hospital.. Was this Rudolf bin Laden, or just Arkansas Trailer Park Harem Scarem?A researcher at the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute said the attack came during the peak rutting season when up to 30 female reindeer may be on heat in the territory of one buck."Every year in the rutting season, buck reindeer are very possessive about their harems," said Mauri Nieminen, a reindeer expert at the institute. "If a person goes into an area between the reindeer and his females, the buck can easily turn on him or her."

The last line is funny. "Oh no, alternative view points that I might disagree with! I should be sheltered from such things!" haha. Those of us with a true thirst for understanding and knowledge seek out these things, that's why I read your shitty blog, and why you cower in fear when I challenge you to debate or even to read mine.

Baron: you say Islamic jihadis are against civilization. This couldn't be any further from the truth. They're born and bred of american power, they buy into all the myths of America the great empire. The only difference is that the empire has been trodding over them, and now they want to command the empire. They don't want to destroy civilization, that's a juvenille thing to say and shows and utter lack of understanding. What's next "terrorists hate our freedom"?

Oh and talking about people following cult leaders. That's pretty fucking rich. George W. Bush, does the name mean anything to you lot? Hmmm, worshipping cult leaders, defying basic logic and facts to continue to agree with the beloved and respected comrade leader, hmmmm.

Arrogant is right. These movements are so nazi--Hitler with his vegetarianism, anti-coffee, anti-alcohol, anti-tobacco (but not anti-amphetamines), and the whole bit with nature, primitivism, hygeine, purity of essence, cleansing the earth of foul humanity. Essentially in love with death as an antidote to the awfulness of the things in their minds. Behind the fury of wehrmacht arms was a big ole sissy movement.

fausta: A book that came out in the early 90's, entitled 'Unlimited Wealth" made something of the same point. Technologies do not just advance, they interact in ways that no one could predict. The classic example is the dispaperance of the carburator. Who could have guessed that when we had IBM 360's crunching along that digital computer technology would be applied to internal combustion engines and be used to replace highly complicated carbs for approx 1/10 the production cost, with far greater reliability, much better emissions, and vastly improved fuel economy?The author pointed was that we Americans do this far better than anyone else in the world. He predicted that we would soon surpass the then-ascendent Japanese economically because of that fact - and because while they became superb at asking customers "What do you want?", Americans were saying to people "Here is what you need."Desert rat: Compared to Liberia and Gaza we have already had our Singularity - and they know it and it drives them crazy. Perhaps the real reason for the fury of the Islamic Facists is that they know we have, are, and will pass through our self-created sigularities and leave them far behind, wondering, like Vinge's protagonists, where everybody went.

jeez, IOTM, "...you cower in fear when I challenge you to debate or even to read mine."

I've never SEEN anyone quite so frantic to attract readers. Why don't you try being, like, not insane, or somethin'? Maybe then somebody would want to play.

You Bush haters know that he just forgave $55,000,000,000 that poor nations borrowed back in the 90s? Even if he IS a jerk, that is a world-historical helping hand to the needy. How much help are you rads providing? Haven't seen any black-clad body-pierced relief workers helping the hurricane victims--all i've seen are red-state Americans driving cross-country on their own dime to chain-saw trees out of highways, and take food and water to the helpless. Your type, as far as value to the commons, are Nulls. Why? because you don't have anything to offer. No matter how much your type hates the capitalists, you'll never put a bean in a spoon for anybody anywhere, ever. You ain't up to snuff on making anything, so you got nothing to help anybody with. Unless someone needs crazy sentences, what value are you to the world?

Ah, dang, I have to be at the Mexican Consulate at noon--time to grab a shower. I won't be around to enjoy your barrage of name-calling, freaky-geeky--sorry. Doug, will you insult IOTM for me, for a few hours?

Possible classical connection- Singularity: "He was given power to give breath to the image (statue -NLT) of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed."

"... I had a rare opportunity to hear a detailed explanation of U.S. military strategy this weekend when the Centcom chief, Gen. John Abizaid, gathered his top generals here for what he called a "commanders' huddle." They described a military approach that's different, at least in tone, from what the public perceives. For the commanders, Iraq isn't an endless tunnel. They are planning to reduce U.S. troop levels over the next year to a force that will focus on training and advising the Iraqi military. They don't want permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. Indeed, they believe such a high-visibility American presence will only make it harder to stabilize the country. ..."

"... "The longer we carry the brunt of the counterinsurgency fight, the longer we will carry the brunt," says Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who commands U.S. troops in Iraq. "The sooner we can shift [to Iraqi security forces] the better." Casey explains: "A smaller U.S. footprint, that is allowed to decline gradually as Iraqi forces get stronger, actually helps us." ..."

"... After watching Iraqi political infighting for more than two years, they're more cautious. "I think we'd be foolish to try to build this into an American democracy," says one general. "It's going to take a very different form and character." The military commanders have concluded that because Iraqis have such strong cultural antibodies to the American presence, the World War II model of occupation isn't relevant. ..."

Well I've been half right, anyway.We will have to see about that base, though. Depends on timing, we could have our cake and eat it, too.

I thought we'd be more up front about basing 30,000 - 40,000 troops there, medium to long term. They are saying that we do not want that. It may be semantics, spin, the Air Wing will have to be stationed somewhere. I don't think we would move to only Carrier Air for Ground Support. I'd think there would have to be at least some forward deployed rotary support,both logistical and combat ground.

First, Kurweil has no equation to map the rate of change of human intelligence to the x (time) axis so he just throw the dart at the marvelous exponential curve and assume that we are close to the knee of that curve. He has no idea what the y axis is and what is the mapping unit of the y axis. I can also use the same exponential chart to prove otherwise by using the humongous unit of knowledge in the universe to claim that our knowledge is even smaller than a drop of water in the ocean and we are not very far from the prehistoric man in that humongous chart. With a mind of a micron, a move of few centimeters is probably a singularity semantically, but look at it from a remote view, it is rather insignificant. As a matter of fact, the move from the prehistoric man to today's man could be considered as a singularity if we adjust the x axis accordingly.

Second, human mind is not a Turing machine and you cannot design a machine to surpass human's mind if you don't know what it's designed for. If you don't know what it is designed for then you can't reverse engineer and if you can't reverse engineer it, you can't model its properties correctly because modeling without knowing what it is designed for is like throwing a dart into a room full of furnitures, whatever stick still doesn't not represent the room, but rather of a piece of equipment just happened to stick at the moment.

Third, assume we know what it designed for and by Steve Pinker suggestion through the logical law of natural selection, the brain is designed to maximize it duplication of its genes. With this purpose, it cames will all adaptive functions and properties to make its jobs easier. Language, pattern recognition, symbols representation, networking and all of the mundane behaviors appropriate for certain symbols during certain situation that we take for granted will make the fastest machine crying uncle. It is the natural computation that makes the human brain remarkable, not the specific computing power, people are so envy at the computing machine. The logical extension of the brain design to maximize its gene copying, is the brain can only maximize its gene copying in its conducive environment with less stress placed upon it. Information overload is also a stress to the mind and is antithesis of of the brain design hence there is no such dramatic singularity could ever occur. This condition could change provided the material of the brain is changed but at this moment, we are clueless as Adam with Eve in the dark cave.

I would, if there were any point, put money down that no machine will ever pass the Turing test. As I joked at another blog, if I were running the test I would begin with a question like: "why are, or is it true that, there are no atheists in fox-y-holes!!" When a macine can mediate the paradoxes of religion and a possibly offensive but not entirely coherent punning, and respond clearly within the context of my conversation, then I will admit that everything I know is wrong.

The assumption you make is that there is something unexplainable or paradoxical about the phenomena of religion and flight to religion. If you change your premises, the problem is much more workable.

For instance, what if we start with the premise that there is no God (in the normal sense of protector, which is what you believe in while in a fox hole), a stipulation that is not at all unlikely, and one a machine probably would assume. The intelligent machine would have no difficulty postulating various reasons why humans tend to be taken in by the idea when staring at the abyss. Patterns would emerge that would have similar causes--i.e. ultimate powerlessness can spawn the idea of ultimate powerfulness, and a belief thereof--and while we cannot look to the machine for Truth Unvarnished, it is arrogant to believe that the human brain is the last word on intelligence in the universe.

A much more interesting question than passing the Turing test, which seems to me to be a low standard for appraising intelligence, is how a machine can become self-aware. A machine can be hyper-intelligent, be able to communicate that intelligence, and still not be self-aware. Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it.

Regardless, most analysis of this issue are handicapped by the assumption that intelligence must be recognizably human to be intelligence. It does not. Intelligence is measured by data retention (memory), processing speed, spontaneous recall, pattern recognition and extrapolation (induction), etc. Not necessary are emotions, senses, or self-awareness.

The human brain is a phenomenal piece of natural architecture, no doubt about it. There are more neurological pattern possibilities than there are particles in the universe. There is a good chance that any AI will strongly resemble this architecture.

I have a soft place in my heart for an ethical understanding of evolution, but which comes first, technological change or ethics? Would women have been liberated without vast improvements in homecare technology? If it still took 12 hours of hard work every day to keep a house clean and functioning, who would do it if women were the bread-winners? Men could, sure, but then the problem of liberation is merely transferred, not solved. We forget that women and men divided labor out of necessity, and without technological achievements one of them was always going to be "trapped" at home. History determined that to be women, but it didn't have to be. Either way, it was technology that enabled the ethical revolution of true gender equality by making women bored and unsatisfied with a life spent at home.

To end, an inventing machine that combines all knowledge of prior art in all fields of human enterprise would speed up the time of R&D exponentially. Quickly, all things that are possible become reduced to practice, as the inventing machine tackles one problem after another. If cellular senescence can be cured, the machine will cure it, and we will live 5,000 years. If minds can be downloaded, we will be able to download them, and live our lives in a virtual reality.

The emphasis imparts to the "If", because whether or not "we can" is subsumed therein. I am not confident enough in human intelligence to say definitively what is or isn't possible. I am confident that "what is" will be enormous, and destabilizing.

"I can also use the same exponential chart to prove otherwise by using the humongous unit of knowledge in the universe to claim that our knowledge is even smaller than a drop of water in the ocean and we are not very far from the prehistoric man in that humongous chart."---Great Stuff, lan.Hope Presbypoet sees that post.

"A much more interesting question than passing the Turing test, which seems to me to be a low standard for appraising intelligence, is how a machine can become self-aware. A machine can be hyper-intelligent, be able to communicate that intelligence, and still not be self-aware. Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it."---Maybe you have the entire answer right there, Aristedes:We are not only who "we" are, but the sum total of all that humanity has been, and we are adding to that.Ruthlessly....and computers are notoriusly deficient in senses.You think I'M Tone Deaf!

iotm, nobody reads your blog, because your ambition far, far exceeds your competence… case in point, A Logical Proof That God Doesn't Exist , better men than present have tried, and failed. It’s crock stuff, snake oil, like a definitive proof to the order of prime numbers or some such…perhaps it exists, but that ain’t it, pal.

btw, an educated person is indeed open to ideas, but intelligent people know where to draw the line at feverish jackassery, thereby both accounting for your blog readership and your open-armed embrace of green-anarchism conspiracy theory. Proved logically, ;).

These people remind me of the creeps in Doctor Strangelove drooling over the prospect of repopulating the world after a nuclear holocaust.

I wonder what is their reaction to this simple, factual statement:

The extinction of all earth-descended life WILL occur at some point in the future unless said life is spread outside this solar system. It may be sooner, by asteroid, climate change, or volcanism; or it may be later when the sun burns out; but it will happen.

The possibilities for spreading earth life include transport by aliens, evolution of non-intelligent biological space faring species, or space technology developed by an indigenous intelligence (preferably us). While the first two possibilities cannot be strictly ruled out, the third is practically a slam-dunk in light of the accelerating rate of technology.

Our best theories say that the sun will burn out in a few billion years; and that the universe will continue on without it not for billions or trillions of years, but for a duration so long we have coined no common word to describe it. Are these people really content to see the extinction of life in the infancy of the universe? Doesn’t humanity deserve some consideration as the likely savior of earth life?

I cannot, will not, take the Neo-Luddite Greens serously. I have studied histroy, anthropology, archeology, and I can tell you, life before the Industrial Age was hard, hard, work. Hard work like those skinny spoiled suburbanites & gentrified-district yuppies that are Mean & Green do not understand. They have no idea what it is like to live as Gatherers (can't be Hunter-Gatherers, "meat is murder")or subsistence-level Neolithic-style farmers staking their familes' lives on a single crop. Pre-Industrial farming was actually MORE destructive of the Environment with continual felling of trees, pulling oup of crops, diseases spread by too much contact with domestic animals and their emissions, or by too little contact that left entire cultures vulnerable to a lethal case of measles. Pre-Industrial famring villages produced generations of people who never did ANYTHING except farm, and whose knowledge & concept of the universe rotated around the 10-20 mile radius of their villages of a walk to a market town. As Michael Crichton recently said "there never was an Eden".

And what of Mohammedan women, are they continuely reborn, as Virgins, to be used as reward to the "Faithful". I mean there have to be alot of those girls, if each Mohammedan to have fallen for allah gets his own set of virgins.Do they get to trade the virgins in? or do they have to keep those same 72 women with them for all eternity?One man, alone, amongst all those women, forever, no thanks, allah.

Edifying, wide-ranging reponse to Dymphna's day off in Charlottesville.

The weirdo utopians she ran into in Lee Park may or may not be lost bolsheviks (I doubt it, Wretchard), but that's no reason not to characterize them as such in the interests of a colorful thread.

Actually, I like what Dymphna has said elsewhere about her aversion to ALL utopians, which presumably would include the architects of the "Baghdad -- Year Zero" debacle. (I'm a Jay Garner fan, myself).

Still, when Dymphna says Charlottesville is "Berkeley East", she is either a)being her usual poetic self, or b)not getting into town often enough.

What if there is a critical stopping point to our knowledge of the universe and our achievements? What if there is a point at which the energies become prohibitively high and therefore impossible? One possibility is the indefatigability of the order of prime numbers…we will, I’m sure, never figure it out. Physically, what about antimatter, how much energy will it cost to convert it and supply a post-fossil fuel, post-fission, post-fusion energy revolution? Another is the inscrutability of quantum mechanics were nobody really ‘gets it.’ Yadda, yadda and on and on; point is that technology depends as much as upon civilization as civilization depends on technology and sometimes one simply can’t squeeze through the eye of the needle to follow the other.

Consider the papal states in Italy. With the encroachment of France into the peninsula (contesting Spanish claims), they brought cannons that could defeat city walls. This was the era of Machievelli and the creation of the Princely State, to quote . Technology effectively overthrew the political order by the hiring of mercenaries, condottieri, and created a new regime of defense technology with the ‘trace italienne.’ The princely state adapted to the prevailing winds of history, though not to the rise of kingly, territorial states, and the nation-state that followed.

On the other hand, the Qing dynasty in China, even when pressed with foreign (European) technology still refused to adapt as the fragile limits of Qing society would not permit it.

While I am no materialist, circumstances do affect all people. So too with our philosophies which limit what we can know in the here and now, and our technology which legitimizes, for better or worse, them.

Aristides writes a fascinating post. In particular: it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it. What you have just described is cognitive robotics.

Artificial intelligence and the search for self-aware machines has historically and inexplicably focused on a deus ex machina approach wherein the "intelligence" consisted merely of a piece of software residing in some machine, wholly detached from any physicality.

What if the machine had senses? A camera, for instance, so it could see and memorize its physical self, even if that self was not much more than a beige box; microphones to hear and memorize its own electric hum and the noise of its fans. The ability to recognize things out of the ordinary, things other than the known self; a hand holding the box, the sound of a cough or a person talking. This is a simple comparison to the memorized nominal condition; a simple not equal to. The machine would be thus able to distinguish itself from an uninsulated environment. Can we say that this is at least a primitive form of self-awareness?

One point of significance is the recognition that this system required the opportunity to memorize itself in a state where its sensors were insulated from non-self stimuli. One wonders if humans become self-aware through a similar process.

If a conspiracy to murder an individual is aggressively prosecuted by LE, what vigor will conspirators be prosecuted with who advocate the murder of 6 billion people? What is the name for the extermination of a species? Controlled extinction? Perhaps the problem is diluted into Stalin’s precept that the murder of millions is a mere statistic.

Nah, I don’t think these people would care if the Eskimos remain semi-industrialized or that most socialist societies remain intact. They have to be goal oriented and work at things right at hand, which is to say that they intend on destroying the industrialized West, beginning with the USA. After all, familiarity breeds contempt, and these would be genocidal tyrants are all so familiar with the West. Maybe it is time for them to fan out in areas that are already being expunged in the matter they advocate, how about Dafur or Zimbabwe? Both are lovely this time of year.

Rainbow Six was, in my opinion, about 600 pages too long, but had some clever plot lines that allowed the Greens to spread their engineered disease around the planet, in that case the Olympics, but it could have been as easy through the UN.

The line at Jim Jones punch party was long but only so long as his personal coercion could muster. Thank god for the second amendment. As long as it remains intact the people have recourse from moonbats and a government that feels a need to rule popularly with extremists. Viva la Azlan.

Thank god for little girls. The world that feminists collectively envision is truly one that I would not be a part of. Fortunately, these women and their misandry have ruled me out of being in any such world. Could you imagine what pap they teach their daughters? Such enlightened thought solves much, women can live blissfully unaware of the outside world in their fantasies while the flesh eating Morlacs live in a violent underground waiting for the soft fleshy ones to ripen.

The USA needs more Mexicans and less whities, fortunately the white women are doing everything they can to guarantee this outcome. Diversity now!

Aristedes, thanks for picking up on my comment. Unfortunately we’re going to have to agree to disagree (a paradoxical concept I can’t imagine a machine ever grasping, except in some pre-programmed sense.)

The intelligent machine would have no difficulty postulating various reasons why humans tend to be taken in by the idea when staring at the abyss. Patterns would emerge that would have similar causes--i.e. ultimate powerlessness can spawn the idea of ultimate powerfulness, and a belief thereof--and while we cannot look to the machine for Truth Unvarnished, it is arrogant to believe that the human brain is the last word on intelligence in the universe.

-OH, I see difficulty everywhere. For starters, what can powerless or powerful ever mean to a machine? That it can or cannot do what it wants? How is the machine going to have desire, will, freedom? What I think is arrogant is the attribution of our human qualities to machines or, for that matter, animals. Humility is recognizing that we are alone, the queer creatures that we are, until the day we meet intelligence from somewhere else in the universe. And humility is also recognizing that the human cannot be known or thought without the idea of God. Whether God actually exists, or whether humans alone created the idea of God, is not really the question; what is God? is perhaps a better question, though unanswerable in any fully satisfying way by either human or machine.

Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it.

-I do not consider animals to be self-aware, though they can certainly process environmental info. and respond to signals from the environment, such as the “names” we give them. Our self-awareness comes from our sense of sharing in a scene or event with our fellow mortal human beings. Notably the scene always takes the form of a desiring periphery around a sacred center. What makes the scene significant, a precondition for self-awareness, is our ability to represent it, to figure a sign that transcends and survives the worldly scene and that serves as the basis for the construction of a symbolic imagination that is not merely indexical or instinctual.

Regardless, most analysis of this issue are handicapped by the assumption that intelligence must be recognizably human to be intelligence.

-here, we agree. All I am arguing is that we cannot replicate a specifically human intelligence in a machine that is not significantly human itself, i.e. a cyborg that has need to come to terms with its mortality and the culture that transcends this mortality.

which comes first, technological change or ethics? Would women have been liberated without vast improvements in homecare technology? If it still took 12 hours of hard work every day to keep a house clean and functioning, who would do it if women were the bread-winners?

-my point is that the technology would not have been invented or applied if women did not already want to be liberated from drudge work. But that desire existed long before the technology to make it possible did. The ethic of liberation came first, as a result of women’s (and men's) reflections on the different roles assumed by human beings. Once a king or queen existed to exemplify the life of leisured luxury, it was only human that everyone would aspire to realize what was first articulated in terms of the sacred, e.g. the divine right of kings and queens. And, indeed, today in the west everyone can live, to some extent, like the kings and queens of old, and in many ways better. Even the poor are often fat, as were only the aristocrats of old.

History is a process of secularization; it unfolds as an attempt to realize what is first imagined as sacred, unrealizable by ordinary human beings, mere mortals. The possibility of a new ethics begins in the sacred or esthetic imagination and is only later possibly realized in this world. Keep this in mind when you approach the question of why people find the idea of the singularity appealing. The “singularity” is something of a sacred goal to realize according to an ethic that we are now just beginning to construct. When the picture is clearer, thought out more carefully, we might then find the technology to build it. I ragged a little on Kurzweil, but futurists play an important role in human society. God bless ‘em all.

Rat, 9:13 AM "Once a mind was 'connected', just think of the hacker and spam opportunities that would develop."---I always thought there was something conspiratorial going on in there, but maybe they hacked *that* thought in on me?

----

"Hacking into someone's brain, now that would be something."---Isn't that what our Muslim Friends have been doing since day 1?

Anniston's report quotes research by a Dr. Herbert Greenward, who studied "11 overweight people who visited heaven after they 'died' in surgery or in accidents, and then were revived by doctors." Greenward's overweight patients apparently told their doctor that during near-death experiences, heavenly angels allowed them to pig out on their favorite foods.

Esther Smoyke, a 390-pound, 54-year-old from Tampa, Fla., said "everyone loves burgers, shakes and fries in heaven," and that "angels love their fries -- they drown them in ketsup," according to Anniston's report.The WWN report went on to describe other "intriguing cases" in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina studied by Greenward that seemed to indicate that in heaven, there is no pain and no gain.

"These findings are wonderful news for overweight people, many of whom fear that in heaven, they'd be forbidden from committing the sin of gluttony or unable to even taste food," Anniston quotes Greenward as saying. "Apparently, the opposite is true. Indulging in the feast provided by the Lord is encouraged, and food tastes even better in heaven than it does on Earth."

Heavenly indeed, but troubling. There is this bit in the Bible about the sin of gluttony, but maybe that just doesn't apply in paradise.

Anniston's report ends with some unsettling news for those who might not make it through the pearly gates. Apparently of the 16 cases Greenward studied, five of the obese people who had near-death experiences went to hell, not heaven.

"In Hell, there's plenty of food alright," Anniston quotes Greenward as saying. "The problem is, it's just out of reach of all these millions of naked fat people, who are chained to boulders and struggle to reach it for all eternity."---The front-page headline,"Found: Saddam and Osama's Gay Home Movies."

No Squealing 'Rat, He:.Aleman: I'll never squealMOUNT STERLING, Ill. -- He's known as the ultimate iceman -- a cool, calculating mob killer whose brains and brutality are matched only by his stubborn refusal to rat out others.

"They talk about the f------ mob; at least we've got principles!" Aleman says, his voice raising.Aleman doesn't much like this prison, which is fairly modern and located just outside this town of around 2,000."It's the mental torture that bothers me," he says. "They don't give beatings."

He prefers his last stay, at the state prison in Dixon."I'm an oil painter," he says."There's no art classes here or art room," he says, adding he had an easel in his room at Dixon. "Out here you can't do any of that," saying he believes pencils are all that are sold along that line at the prison commissary.,Literary critic.He discusses Les Miserables with a mix of worship and disbelief."What a f------ tale," he says. "How could a guy write something like that? . . . It's impossible. . . . He covers the entire French Revolution!

Another recommendation is The Count of Monte Cristo, a Napoleonic novel in which the protagonist is wrongly imprisoned but escapes to vanquish his enemies."You're so happy after reading it," he says. "But I couldn't shake Les Miserables."He almost chides a reporter for not having read more classics.What have you read? he asks.Some of the Greek tragedies.Like what?The Iliad, The Odyssey."I've read that."

"I miss reading . . . how I'm situated, you can't read, you just can't, it's not conducive to reading," Aleman says.Why?"It's got something to do with the two hours out and 22 in," he says

One youthful tragedy he shares, however, involves a long-ago pal named Mike.A group of guys were on a boat, and one of them threw Mike's keys into the water as a joke. Mike dived in to get them, got tangled in the weeds and drowned.

Aleman was at a family picnic, and believes if he'd been with Mike, he would have been saved, or never in the water at all."I didn't like that f------ kid" who threw the keys, Aleman says. He probably wouldn't have been there if Aleman was around that day, he says.

The dead boy's mom took it hard, and seemed to blame Aleman for not, somehow, being there to save her son, Aleman says."I got to live with that," he says, professing remorse for a death he wasn't responsible for, while expressing no regret about anything he might have done in the mob.

yeh, them Seven Deadly Sins don't get NEAR the play they oughtta, in a self-examining society that studies its own mood and desires knowledge of happiness. The SDSs aren'tr even Biblical--much to my surprise whern i came cross that factoid. Some fourteenth century (or thereabouts) Catholic philosopher-monk wrote 'em up for his flock. Then there's those Seven Virtues...jeez...we've been laughing at that old Victorian bluenosery for just about as long as we've been wondering why we aren't happier.

It's important to realize who Ray Kurzweil is, and why he gets these mad props. These are not new ideas, Ray Kurzweil has always built machines that can uniquely do what humans do.

I had the fun of working with Kurzweil machines from the early 80's onward. The Kurzweil Reading Machine for the Blind, v1, came out in the late 70's. (Nathan wasn't even born I bet!)

The Reading Machine actually did READ OUT LOUD. Can you imagine, if you were blind and could lay a book on a machine like a copier and it would read it to you?

This technology was soon adapted to business uses, and by v2/3, these machines were reading not only all fonts in Roman alphabets, but other alphabets, like Cyrillic.

Ray Kuzweil also built the incredible synthesizers, which owe their inhuman ability for mimicry to the fact that Ray had them "listen" to instruments to gain their unerring fidelity to instruments as diverse as the grand piano, saxophone and drums.

All of Ray's inventions/insights have produced machine capabilities that were previously reserved.

He put together machines that could "see" and "read" and "hear" years ago, decades ago.

"Thinking" may possibly enter this list of previously HUMANS-ONLY abilities.

…anarcho-primitivism is a convenient label used to characterize diverse individuals with a common project: the abolition of all power relations — e.g., structures of control, coercive authority, domination and exploitation — and the creation of a form of community that excludes all such relations.

Seems that, once you destroy civilization and send people into the wilderness, it'd be hell trying to stop it from happening all over, again- authority structures would (human) naturally crop up all over the place to organize efforts for survival and surplus. So, then, counter-authority authority structures would have to organize against the organizers in order to maintain properly meager levels of survivalism and scraping by. They'd be savage nobles in charge of the noble savages, asserting authority whilst denying dominion.

Vegan eco-communers, too, are a bit disappointing in that they don't seem to realize how their dietary conceits inflict pain and suffering upon plants, which have feelings, too, just like animals. The most responsible action all earth lovers can take is to not eat anything at all, sparing both flora and fauna and keeping the world safe for kudzu and palmetto bugs, unless of course shrooms and hemp don't have really noticeable feelings, in which case the wilderness project can go on fairly guilt-free.

Tony,Did you guys have to find some way to keep that book laying there from going to sleep?------"the abolition of all power relations — e.g., structures of control, coercive authority, domination and exploitation — and the creation of a form of community that excludes all such relations"---The cool thing tho, is then c couldn't lord it over me, er,D.

I wonder how much suffering those pages went through at the "hands" of Tony and Ray, being insensitively and remorselessly read that way by a MACHINE!---If gaawd had wanted books to be read by *machines,* he wouldn't have given men hands.

The computer could scan and read and "type" pages about 17x faster than the Office Typing Champ. Okay, maybe only 3x faster in some cases, but still, Faster / Cheaper / Accurate data capture.

In Response to this Industrial Marvel -- The Users always complaining about the Dancing Bear's Dance Moves. "Oh look! it made a mistake!" the customer always points out, pointing to one error in 500 characters that they would otherwise have to outsource to have typed for a pretty penny.

Doug, you jest, but read (!) what Gutenberg had to go against. And the Wright brothers... it sounds like simple words, but when those 'devil worshipper' and 'vile hater' words were being whispered and shouted at those who courageously sought a new way, it was hurtful, and difficult.

Any meme that catches on in a person's mind and impairs the person's ability to know or love, is a demon (daemon), and must be treated as such. 'brain-hackers', indeed.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack — and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city.Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, said he was struggling to forecast weather patterns starting in 1998 when he discovered the theory on the Internet. It's now detailed on Stevens' website, www.weatherwars.info, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported.

Iotm probably thinks Cindy Sheehan is hot,the perfect leftie earth mother shamelessly exploiting her son in her narcissistic moment in the media sun.Five years from now she'll be lucky to be a question on "Jeopardy"Take a look at the freak show on Michelle Malkin's blog from the demonstrations.I wonder if Iotm is one of the grayheaded eunuchs relieving the sixties pictured looking on piously as the saintly Sheehan is carried off in cuffs.

I wonder what this will do for the recruiting of good species traitors in Iraq:

'U.S. Special Forces Kill No. 2 Terrorist in Iraq'

FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam, who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad early Monday morning Iraq time. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted terrorist...

That's a good one, even if accidental, Trangbang:"I wonder if Iotm is one of the grayheaded eunuchs relieving the sixties pictured looking on piously as the saintly Sheehan is carried off in cuffs"---That's about the state of things for the grayheaded eunuchs these days:Even in public, half the time they are relieving themselves, masked only by their faithful companion, Depends-tm.After a few more anarchist workshops, they'll be ashamed to wear *them* anymore, and we'll be treated the Televised Spectacle of creeping stains down their clothes, as they soak up those last few minutes of fame on this earth.

bismarck once said that you dont want to see two things: how sausages are made and how tards are disciplined at special schools.

just the same its better to not see the left for what they really are and that is filthy irresponsible stoners.

they stand in super market aisles high out of their gords taking 20 minutes to decide what munchies to buy and usually simply stumble over to another aisle to repeat the iterative stoner process time and time again. when they return home, they either look at pr0n or write for lame leftist blogs.

My wife was going through old textbooks we bought here when we were homeschooling our son. There's a used bookstore that has all sorts, including textbooks turned in from local students of the public schools.Before she took them back, I looked through them, and kept one titled"AMERICAN GOVERNMENT""Comparing Political Experiences"Published in 1979.Luckily, this was one book that never got used, as best we can recall.Leafing through, I came upon 20 pages devoted to GOO, which was "Get Oil Out" which was the organization formed in Santa Barbara following a Blowout on one of Union Oil's offshore platforms.It waxes on about what a great example it is for organizing political action committees and etc, including a hagiographic piece on the first "Chicano" City Council member. Turns out he was active in the formative years of the local "La Raza" organization, which I think was one of the first. Built Casa de la Raza, probably ripping off local taxpayer's money for their racist cause. Last time I looked they had taken over significant parts of the Humanities offerings at UC Santa Barbara with their dumbed down, anti-American claptrap. "Matinez feels strongly that concerned people like him must remain active in politics. He believes there must always be some individual or group to see that resources are equally distributed among city residents."(Including Subversive Racists, of course.)The long and short of it was, this was the beginning of the downward spiral, leading eventually to the Rich Kid's Riot in Islla Vista which culminated in the Burning of the new Bank of America Building, and the murder of a security guard on campus. Very effective politiking indeed, certainly something the kiddies should learn how to do.(The book of course leaves out these gory details, they were all leftist enviros, so immune to negative reporting.)Turns out the whole damn book is comprised of similar contemporary examples: Over 600 pages worth!

This epoch also featured Tone Deaf Blabbermouth doug attending a City Council Meeting at the time. On the way home, all po'ed about the endless droning of the "corrupt local government," I picked up a hitchhiker on his way home.Blabbering on about the "corrupt relationship" between Union Oil and the local Italian Family that leased out the Pier they owned (probably the garbage company also) for the oil service stuff, the kid got to hear my enlightened commentary, listening quietly. When we got to his house, as he started to shut the door he looked at me and said:"That's my Uncle"Same old Dumb... doug, some things never change.Lucky to be alive.

It now strikes me how unlucky it was for me and others that we happened to be there at this moment in history.Might have spent that time learning something closer to the truth.Live and learn.(within each individual's capabilities, of course. There's Slow Learners, and Very Slow Learners.)

On topic, one of Gore Vidal's books discussed environmentalism, the undesirability of mans works and a doomsday cult that was going to kill off most of mankind to create a fresh start. The book, "Kalki" was published in 1978, but still reads pretty good.

It is not "Lincoln" or "Burr", but Vidal is not too far off his top form.

On the other side of the coin, the "singularity" argument is bolstered by technology and recent discoveries that the human brain is rapidly evolving.

Technology has screamed along with exponential leaps in robotics, computer processing speed, programming, flash memory, storage media. At one point in the 70's an oft-repeated comparison was made between the many tasks a housewife did and how that knowledge, to be duplicated in a computer, would be in a machine as big as the Empire State Building. Now it would all fit in a unit as big as an iPod, which is the size of the Japanese robot "X-models" brains now being used in a human form robot that reads and processes expressions, applies pre-programmed responses that mimic, and mimic only the emotional factor - and the robot models do receptionist duties.

Still in the very early stages, and artificial intelligence is progressing slower than once thought, we haven't achieved self-reproducing computers or 100% autonomous factories yet - but inklings of a possible future human path are there - the deus ex machina path.

And the biggest lure is effective immortality of a human consciousness if humans eventually take that form.

We learn that terabyte flash memory techology is achievable in atomic crystal configurations and that quantum computers that make our current models pale in comparison are coming. We watch and marvel at the first "sorta" perpetual motion machines - the Mars Rovers - which both passed 600 days and could be 100s of times more effective if they have AI and a small nuclear fuel source.

If we don't want the deus ex machina, nature appears to be already causing a rapid development and adaptation by humanity (in an evolutionary time scale context) of the brain. The microcephalin gene that arose 30,000 years ago is now in all populations but a sizable portion of the subsaharan African and Pacific aborigine populations. The ASPN gene that also dictates brain redesign arose only 7,000 years ago in the ME. We suspect other mutations exist, some later than ASPM that the human species has not shown a bias for and selection of. In the populations with new genes suspected of giving enhanced, inheritable intelligence or particular abilities (perfect pitch, organizational ability, augmented spacial perception) show tradeoffs exist. Rare diseases, inclination to myopia and allergies in those "above-normal" populations are common.

And improved evolutionary traits may be suppressed or lost because very intelligent people tend to go on to challenging careers where babies are limited. Whereas a new welfare state ensured that a sub-70 IQ woman who cranks out 5 babies below moron level and one of normal intelligence passes on more genes, rather than dying out from their inability, or their feckless biological father's inability to compete with more advanced members of the species. Two hundred years ago, most of the crowd that congregated at the SuperDome would have died of disease or starvation as they waited hopelessly for more adept members of society to clean up their trash, feed them, and give them new cloths and diapers..all while the more adept people in the same disaster organized, moved if they had to, and fed and clothed themselves...but weren't breeding in the dark, dank SuperDome..

We may also advance the pace of nature with engineered DNA, gene modification.

The singularity may be advanced by the simple passage of much time in a natural process, in the codewriting and quantum computing work, in a bioengineering lab 50 years from now where genes are added to suppress cancer, give enhanced IQ in a 110-210 Bell Curve, and eliminate early myopia.

Oh, he has a special plan for that Yeo, fear not.---"genes are added to suppress cancer, give enhanced IQ in a 110-210 Bell Curve, and eliminate early myopia"---Doesn't take that much of an immagination to realize how seamlessly other characteristics could be, um, "eliminated" now, does it?

And, of course, the 'family-planning' technology will be available to the young couple able to afford it. And soon enough, ALL who can afford it will face the question, is it cruel to my yet-to-be-conceived child to put him into a classroom and onto a playing field with the trait-designed super-sized, super-brained, super-athletes (who-shhh!-are also super-good-looking)?

Yeah, we were going to get an amniocentesis test, we thought, then my doctor friend asked a simple question:And then what will you do?We never came up with an answer,and ended up never getting aroundto having the test.Probably should have been "eliminated" for not coming up to C4 level criteria:Poor Boy's only human.

It's getting pretty tough already dealing with all the "PERFECTLY" Pearly White Choppers whenever all those closer to perfection types give their perfect smiles to the world.At least I have never come in contact with a perfect latex Breast.

I guess that even though it's shifted in a more perfect direction, it *is* still a bell curve, so you're not doing anything that's CERTAIN.Although that could be dealt with with some post experimental culling.

Deus et Machina? How it has appeared in regards to those useless hyper-fecund parasites of the Superdome, a good start for the modern era would be General Benjamin "Beast" Butler, New Orleans' Recontruction czar post Civil war, who gathered the Ninth Ward's ancestors around himself as a deus machina for the graft & corrupting of federal program funds. That particular concentration of hostages is six or eight generations old--nowhere near enough time to make anything but behavioral changes--and these were valuable people to the southern economy (albeit forced) just prior.

IOW, the only thing wrong with the Superdomers is the government policy that has been using them since the first slave boat docked four hundred years ago.

Dispersed from the ghetto, recovery/integration would be rapid. Dispersal would require only opening the plantation gates, which now have the form of government anti-poverty programs.

However, be warned, without that ghetto, the planet would never have seen a new art form evolve (which the silicon world may be only now beginning to match in level of abstraction), the high-concept mutating super-intelligent multi-sensory expression of the sacred known as Jazz Music.

Easy enough to imagine the array of deus machina. The Nicholsen/Burton underappreciated comic masterpiece "Mars Attacks!" has it right. At the last moment, the world was saved from complete murderous alien destruction by the accidental playing of a Slim Whitman recording, the yodeling bridge of which exploded the otherwise-invulnerable Martians' heads.

Don Adams was in the "Naked Bomb," or some such, in which the mad scientist made a bomb that did just that.Sounds too good.---I didn't know Mel Brooks wrote Get Smart.Says that was why Don took the part....it never left him according to him... Condemened forever to be Max.Bill Dana lives here on the island and writes in the local paper.---re: Superdomers, this looks like a kind of planned diversity that might work...but I am not going to read until tommorrow.. Raleigh LINK .Wouldn't it be more perfectly efficient to just adjust the Bell Curve so as to, a, exclude them?Hey, we've been doing that in our ghettoized NEA Schools, where all the dreg teachers end up!COOL!G.D. Bush and his stupid "kid left behind" movie or whatever.Also, damn Arnold for trying to make tenure be meaningful.What a Cad.

They've really screwed up the search this blog feature:I tried to find your Rhino Post which in the old days woulda worked, and no luck.Just some Dane Bison in ALL BLOGS.Type doug, or Buddy Larsen, you now get ZIP.that sucks7th anniversary too - already too arrogant, them Googleliberals.

Adams, a Jew, took his first (of 3)wive's last name.First lucky woman was:Adelaid Adams.Hope they had some laughs.---Yeah, I'd take about ANY kind of recognition over the kind that Mother Sheehan is Basking in.reminds me of Verc's "shakes head"Hard to believe anyone could be that simple,...or Needy.Sad, Indeedy, but we may as well enjoy the fun if it benefits the Troops.---NOW I have to type in "labud"Your even MORE famous!Bask in it, ya only live once.

One last thing,SIX people died, 1 OD, 1 Suicide4 old folks presumably almost ready to go, in SuperdomeHELLI imagine rapes were similarly overblown.Total Murders, etc in NO was no more than background, but that did NOTfit the template of the current newscycle:Racist Bush LiedPeople Died.All time disaster: Send Money.

You're SO right. Talk about a self-licking ice cream cone. Anti-racist reporter hypes Superdome Hell in order to expose racist Bush (who doesn't know what racism IS, accounting for his tin-ear as well as as his profound decency), and ends up creating news product literally indistinguishable from whatever the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan would write, if he could write.

It's not that the private, personal approach to behavior is so dang great--it isn't, it's just nature--but that it proceeds thru time on so many disconnected fronts that it must and will continually trope, and tho some fall (and become deus machinas of media careers), the whole has it's best chance at survival--meaning that in time fewer will fall.

The alternative, the government program, is like a glacier, frozen and slow moving, and responding only to extreme temperature changes (AKA urban riots and right-wing ballot backlashes).

The one shows up in the "New South", color-blind, successful, attractive of all forms of capital including human, and wherein American Blacks are having a huge economic success.

The other shows up in the Ninth Ward. Social programs which create a careerist public-employee industry while having malign effects on the formal beneficiaries are what create ghettos--which are only a sustained crisis away from gulags.

"Ninth Ward"...what a name, what a symbol...'ward', and 'ninth', as in Dante's outer circle of hell.

Prophets are without honor, y'know, and you must expect your sharp, high-relief 'prophet-of-doom' writing is going to attract the needle. The reason I needle you--or try to--is that I suspect you of being an out-party operative, AKA 'profit-of-doom'.